Quail Creek State Park is very close to where we live. It’s a small but popular park for fishing, boating, kayaking, and hiking.

Quail Creek reservoir was completed in 1985 to provide irrigation and culinary water to the St. George area. Most of the water in the reservoir does not come from Quail Creek but is diverted from the Virgin River and transported through a buried pipeline.

Two dams form the reservoir. The main dam is an earth-fill embankment dam. The south dam is a roller compacted concrete dam, constructed to replace the original earth-fill dam that failed in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1989.

The maximum depth of Quail Creek can reach 120 feet, so it is cold enough to sustain the stocked rainbow trout, bullhead catfish, and crappie. Largemouth bass, which is also stocked, and bluegill thrive in the warmer, upper layers of the reservoir.

Park Overlook at Sunset

Image Details

I took that image on December 28, 2020. This is as close as I will ever get to real time posting. I am way backed up with tons of Autumn images from September through November.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

I used a Canon 16-35MM F4 L Canon 24-105MM F4 L Lens at 24mm, F9.5, for1/8 seconds at ISO 400 on my new EOS R5 mirrorless camera.

If you are a careful observer you will notice a couple of fishermen on the shore.

Also note the format is not a typical 3:2 ration but rather 16:10. I did not accomplish this by cropping but by a vertical panorama sequence merged in Lightroom then cropped.

The full image size is 11,811×7007 and the cropped size is 11,211×7007. This is a huge 425MB file.

The technical aspects are not as important as what I did to get the image. Here are the key details.

It was raining but I thought the clouds might break. So I drove to an overlook, scrambled down the embankment 20 yards or so, waited for the clouds to break and started shooting the reflection when they did, just before sunset.

My total time spent, including the image below and others, was about 2 hours.

Additional Image

Rain or not, those fishermen were out on the lake fishing for trout. I waited for the boat to be in that cloud reflection then grabbed a bunch of images.

At this web compression and size, detail in the boat is lost, but it’s there.

Bad Weather Tips

• If you want great shots, go out in bad weather and hope it doesn’t last.
• Better yet, follow the weather. If you are close by a park or any place you like to photograph,  watch the hourly forecasts and plan where you want to be.

Bad Weather Favorites

1. Canyonlands National Park: Murphy Point Rainbow Sunset #2
2. Porcupine Mountains State Park: Lake of the Clouds
3. Badlands National Park – Double Rainbow at Pinnacles Overlook
4. Death Valley: Aguereberry Point and Aguereberry Camp – Christmas Eve Fog

Equipment List

Those interested in my equipment and recommendations can find it here: Mish’s Equipment List.

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Thanks

Mish